Women Emerging As Priority

Albright Pushing Rights Worldwide

March 26, 1997|By THOMAS W. LIPPMAN The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is elevating the importance of women's issues in the United States' international agenda, placing new emphasis on a policy originally promoted by President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Albright, who took office two months ago, has instructed U.S. diplomats around the world to make the furtherance of women's rights a central priority of U.S. foreign policy.

The U.S. government has been active in this field in a variety of ways:

* In Pakistan, the State Department contributed funds to a volunteer group running a school for Afghan refugee girls, who otherwise would go without education.

* In Namibia, the U.S. Embassy used its entire discretionary fund to finance community efforts to fight sexual violence against women.

* In Washington, the State and Justice departments will meet next month with Russian judges and law-enforcement officers to break a crime ring that dupes Russian women into working as prostitutes.

* In North Carolina on Tuesday, Albright ventured into the home territory of Republican Sen. Jesse Helms to call on the Senate to ratify a 1979 U.N. convention on discrimination against women _ a treaty that Helms, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, has blocked.

``Advancing the status of women is not only a moral imperative, it is being actively integrated into the foreign policy of the United States,'' Albright said at a March 12 International Women's Day ceremony at the State Department. ``It is our mission. It is the right thing to do, and frankly it is the smart thing to do.''

As with former secretary of state Warren Christopher's emphasis on the environment in Clinton's first term, it is not yet known whether this stated commitment will amount to much in practice.

``The Department of State and the Clinton administration have made some very strong and important pronouncements. What you don't see is what it means in practice,'' said Regan Ralph, who monitors women's issues for the watchdog group Human Rights Watch. ``How publicly is this raised with some of the worst offenders? What we have seen is that other issues trump women's human rights. If the administration wants to maintain that it is promoting women's rights, it can't continue to do that. Let's see something beyond the words.''

Albright and other officials, however, maintain that there is a broad range of activities where progress can be made with a small investment of money or political capital, and that the administration is committed to doing as much as possible.

Albright is this nation's first female secretary of state, and is using her position to intensify an emphasis on women's right that predates her appointment.

Both Clintons have been advocates of women's rights, as evidenced by Hillary Clinton's attendance at the 1995 U.N. women's conference in Beijing and the president's decision last year to invest $5 million in a separate fund to provide loans and training for Bosnian women.

``What this administration believes, is that if half the world's citizens are undervalued, underpaid, under-educated, under-represented, fed less, fed worse, not heard, put down, we cannot sustain the democratic values and way of life we have come to cherish,'' Hillary Clinton said when she joined Albright at the March 12 event.